Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing Brazil's 2026 election campaigns. Teams segment messages precisely and replace qualitative polls with 'synthetic voters'. Despite TSE restrictions, the technology speeds up content production.
AI tools enable campaigns to send highly segmented messages, such as to women in São Paulo's west zone without health plans. A major campaign has a 54-person team focused on nanosegmentation. Software monitors social media reactions, tagging millions of profiles to map resonating themes.
Marketers replace costly polls with 'synthetic voters', profiles generated from real voter data, like 'PSDB widows'. "When we have little budget for broad research, it's an option", says Andrés Benedykt, marketer for José Dirceu (PT). A poll with 1,000 respondents costs R$ 150,000, while synthetic voters cost R$ 65,000 monthly.
Videos and images are produced in hours, not days. Ronaldo Caiado's (PSD) presidential pre-campaign video uses AI to show a bleeding Brazilian flag, with narration: "O Brasil assiste indignado, assustado e impotente à morte de milhares de filhos seus, vítimas da criminalidade". Paulo Vasconcelos, Caiado's marketer, says it would take four days without AI.
The TSE resolution bans deepfakes since 2024 and requires labeling manipulated content. Pre-campaigns of Lula (PT), Flávio Bolsonaro (PL), Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicanos), and Fernando Haddad (PT) train AIs with their speeches and rivals'. "A IA vem revolucionando cada processo das campanhas", says Bruno Bernardes of PLTK.
